And those that stand out are inevitably broken. What chance have they after all? The modern intellectual is something of a negativist. His tolerance is composed of indifference and uncertainty. He sees life in the words of Jurgen as a 'wasteful and inequitable process,' and does not discern clearly how to alter it. His philosophy is a series of disappointments. He is bound to go down before a bigotry that is certain of itself. The forces of reaction are so powerfully entrenched. The old boy house master knows exactly what he wants and how he proposes to get it. He advances down a straight road. His enemies pause and wonder and question themselves.
The bigot usually makes the best administrator. He is not worried by abstractions. He is certain of his ends and can devote all his attention to the means. The tolerant head master, the man who sees both points of view, is overcome in the end by preponderating faith and sincerity of reaction. The new man is invariably subjugated, or else is made to go. No head master would be anxious to take his side.
The games master type is intensely popular with parents and old boys. He represents for them the public school spirit. He is a fixed, immutable principle in which they can place their trust. They would be intensely worried were they to learn that the head master had taken the side of a new man against their old friend. The subject would be discussed in the clubs: 'There's trouble brewing at Fernhurst,' they would say. 'This new head master is a liberal. He's quarrelling with old Aiken. I don't like the look of it.' And the position of the school would be shaken. Parents would send their sons elsewhere. The numbers would drop. Unpleasant questions would be put to the head master at the next meeting of the governors. It is the old trouble of the merchant and his goods. Parents have to be placated. They have been assured that 'all is for the best in the best of all possible schools'; and, when they hear rumours of dissension they naturally imagine that something must be wrong with that particular school. It is not so everywhere. They remind the head master of his own official utterances. And it is not easy after prophesying smooth things to satisfy the complaints of those who find them hard.
A head master has to reach his ends through infinite tact and patience and through a long series of compromises. He has to be something of an opportunist. He has to give reasons other than the true ones for what he does. He has to promote progress secretly, while he advocates conservatism. And it is hard to remain true to oneself while playing the Jekyll and Hyde game. Motives become involved; there is too much diplomacy, and the forces of reaction, whatever else they be, are distinctly honest. Certainly he cannot allow the clumsy enthusiasm of a young man to complicate his vexed existence. And the young man has either to break or bend. Usually he bends. He has, after all, to consider his own career. He compromises with himself. He manages to persuade himself that he is not really yielding, but that he is adopting different tactics, attacking the enemy from another side. He decides to do his work of reform quietly, without ostentation. Other people can do their own way if they like.
That compromise is the start of a long process of self-deception. When he becomes a house master it will be so simple to put off parents with excuses. He will be able to justify himself, to say: 'These are stupid folk. They will worry me if I encourage them. I have my work to do. I must pacify them and get on with it.' And so the circle completes itself. The young man who sets out to reform school life, who brought to the task a fine, untried energy, ends in evasion, compromise and self-deception. Boys, parents, and masters are working at cross purposes.
There are certainly a large number of entries on the debit side of the ledger. It remains to be decided what hand has written these entries and whether it is possible to erase them. To a large extent they are due to four things: the moral issue; the cult of athleticism, which is regarded as an antidote to immorality; the conspiracy of silence that exists between parents and boys and masters, and the long period a boy spends at school—the six years that separate so unduly the junior from the senior, that accentuate the blood system, that erect a wall shutting out the world at large. School life is too much of a walled garden, too much of a world in itself. It has remained monastic, it has not established contact with the movements of the hour.
CHAPTER XII SOME SUGGESTIONS: THE LEAVING AGE WITH REGARD TO MORALS
The ardent idealists with their thousand pretty schemes for the regeneration of mankind, find no difficulty in allotting a few panaceas to the Public School. We hear of the 'new world' and of the 'new spirit,' and there is glib talk about the phoenix and the ashes. A few laws have to be passed, a few peasants educated and there will be an end of competition. 'The strong will support the weak, the clever work unselfishly for the general good. Wealth and intellect will be placed at the service of the state. The relations of the sexes will be ordered by eugenics.'